The Interview

Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang are well-known for their incendiary satirical work. They keep their home on constant guard, and have had their studio raided and shows shut down by the Chinese authorities in the past. Their lives have been indelibly marked by politics: their family was labelled ‘counter-revolutionary’ during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and their father murdered by the Red Guards. Their art is a way of coming to terms with the past, and critiquing the present. ‘Even though [Mao] has died, we believe the Mao era is not over yet’, explains Gao Zhen. ‘The systems that Mao set up are still here. To us, he has just changed. He is no longer as serious. He is more cartoonish, more humorous. But the essence of him is still here.’ In their large-scale work The Interview, figures including Osama Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Josef Stalin are staged in an imagined yet almost convincing black-and-white photograph. Some of these men did in fact meet in real life; others never did. Hijacking the image-doctoring strategies beloved of Mao’s own propagandists, the Gao Brothers destabilise history and power in a playful and provocative manner.
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